Lemonade
by Mickleditch
Summary: It only takes one summer for Daisuke to fall in love, and the same one to teach him to be careful of what you wish for. Yaoi, Taichi x Daisuke, implied Taichi x Yamato.
1. Chapter 1

**Pairing(s):** Taichi/Daisuke, implied Taichi/Yamato. (Also brief Takeru/Hikari if you want it to be, mentions of Shuu/Jun, and one-sided OC/Sora).  
**Rating:** M  
**Contents:** m/m, language, underage sex (seventeen year old Taichi, fourteen year old Daisuke)  
**Summary:** It only takes one summer to teach Daisuke to be careful what you wish for. No happy ending.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Digimon; Toei Animation, Bandai, Saban and Disney do. If I did, it wouldn't be suitable for children.  
**Purist's warning:** You're going to see both original and dub names appearing. I'm basically happy with the dub, but it's so inescapable that Digimon takes place in contemporary Japan that I don't see any way to get away with saying that the English names are their real ones. Therefore original names are used, but some of the dub names - the ones that could be logical diminutives - appear as nicknames.

* * *

**Chapter 1**

It should have been easy for him to score. The boy on the other team was fast, but he was also three or four inches taller than Daisuke and outweighed him by a good fifteen pounds, and neither factor was contributing to his maneuverability as Daisuke ducked away, swerved away, and dribbled, running flat out. A couple of players came in to give him some problems, but he shot the ball past them to Kiyoshi on the wing, who some part of Daisuke's brain had been conscious was matching him pace for pace, and barely slowed as he collected the ball and continued the run. It was like that sometimes; you were aware of what was going on on three or four different levels at once, and nobody had an idea first or was the leader because you didn't think about it, it just happened and was.

It had been climbing steadily into the eighties since summer vacation had begun, and today there was glorious, unbroken sunshine in the place of the recent rains; Odaiba baking under an endless blue sky without a wisp of cloud. Daisuke had been recording the temperature every day until the end of term for a science project, but he had no need to look at a thermometer this afternoon to know that it was scorching, and he was dog-tired. Sweat was starting to plaster strands of hair to his face, and his shirt stuck to him like saran wrap, but he didn't slacken his speed as he approached the penalty box.

He gulped air as he twisted his head to his left and right. Almost all of the defenders were out of position. Kiyoshi was struggling to find a gap through which he could pass to Haru in front of the goal, and between Kiyoshi and Daisuke was a clear cross, and, for one beautiful moment in time, between Daisuke and the goal was - nothing.

Daisuke yelled, loud enough to burst a lung.

Kiyoshi's head shot round, a wide smile leaping onto his equally sweat-drenched face as he abruptly switched direction and kicked the ball straight through the legs of one of the boys tackling him with full strength. He was the best winger on the team, and the pass didn't fall short. A few encouraging shouts started to go up from the handful of people hanging around on the sidelines as Daisuke received it, turned in the same step, and shot for the corner of the net.

He saw the ball bounce off the goalpost as if in slow motion, but he hadn't thought that he was close enough for it to hit him. At least not that hard.

"Nice eye you're gonna have there tomorrow," quipped Taichi from the spot where he was lounging, as Daisuke walked off the field after the game. He rolled away, grinning, as the younger digidestined aimed a kick at his shins. "Hey! I'm bored off my ass. Hang out with me for a couple of hours!"

Daisuke gave up his attack, and flopped down on his belly with a groan. His entire socket and cheekbone were throbbing, and he gingerly reached up to touch the raging yellowish-purple bruise that he was sure he could already feel welling up under the skin. He wanted to bang his head against something else very hard, preferably a brick wall. If someone had handed him a pen and paper, he could have written down the names of a few million people he would rather have embarrassed himself in front of than Taichi, his friend, his role model, his... what? Everything that he wanted to be, and nothing that he was. He yanked up a handful of unsuspecting grass. "I should have scored," he said. "How could I _not_ have scored?"

Taichi regarded him for a minute. "Did I ever tell you about the time I fouled the referee?"

"You did _what?_"

"Fouled him. I'd had an argument with him, and then he got in the way of one of my tackles." Taichi went on, mimicking the voice of the injured official. "He said it was 'a vicious and deliberate attack' and red-carded me. I had to sit out a quarter final."

Daisuke gave a reflexive snort of laughter.

"Lost a game once as well because I kicked an own goal in the last five minutes."

"You moron!" Daisuke laughed out loud this time, despite his mood.

As Taichi smirked down at him, he looked into the other boy's eyes, and he was suddenly conscious that he wasn't being told the truth, at least not completely, and, furthermore, that Taichi knew that he knew that. Daisuke wasn't sure whether he felt frustrated or grateful. It made him feel younger, and dumber, that his friend would lie to him just to make him feel better, and not even try to make a better job of hiding it - or maybe do it while knowing that he wasn't a very good liar. Yet, at the same time, he thought that he probably ought to be happy that Taichi would want him to feel better in the first place.

He realized that his smile had faded slightly, and that Taichi was waving a hand in front of his face. "What?"

"Earth to Daisuke! I _said_, Matt's dumped me for a rehearsal, and Sora and Izzy are cramming." Taichi still tended, more often than not, to refer to Koushirou by the nickname he had allotted to him years ago in summer camp, much to Koushirou's mixture of irritation and resigned amusement. "Wanna go to a movie and throw popcorn at the front row?"

"I don't think the ticket guy at the theater likes me," Daisuke muttered. He was unsure if the fact that he'd tried and failed to get into an R-18 movie the month before was the kind of thing that Taichi might relate to and laugh with him about, or if it just sounded somewhat pathetic, so he decided not to tell the story, at least not today.

Food was a better subject. He couldn't imagine food not sounding like a good idea to anyone. He squinted up into the sunlight. "Can we get ramen?"

"You want to eat _again?_"

"I'm growing! I burn calories fast!"

Outside the shop, the concrete exhaled the heat again like a huge storage radiator. They didn't walk many blocks through the crowded areas along the main street, turning off instead along the path that ran under the monorail track, the pedestrian-only route to Taichi's building. The dry stalks of yellowing weeds protruded from cracks in the asphalt, and every now and then, a bird could be heard singing between the intermittent sounds of the trains. Taichi broke his stride to snap off the flower head from a solitary dandelion, and, swinging around in front of Daisuke, stuck it somewhat crookedly behind his ear. Daisuke tried to pull his head away from Taichi's hand, and then shook it violently in an attempt to dislodge the flower, grappling with his armful of soccer ball and food bags.

"_Hey!_ What the -"

Taichi grinned. "Yeah, you're right. You don't need decoration. You're cute enough already."

Daisuke felt a sudden rush of warmth that had nothing to do with the weather; a blush that started out at his neck and rose up into his ears. He gawked, and then mentally slapped himself for proving Jun's past comments right as he realized that he must have, indeed, looked like a goldfish. "I'm... cute?" he said. The question was as much a rhetorical one as not.

Taichi ducked his head in a deliberate way so that he could meet his eyes. "Hey. I was just kidding around - I didn't mean to embarrass you. I say stupid shit all the time; ask Matt."

"I wasn't embarrassed!" Daisuke insisted. He didn't want to be thought of as someone easy to embarrass, as someone that Taichi had to take care around and mind what he said in front of; as a child. He'd never had any difficulties deciding what he did want. It was easy; you saw what you needed, and then gave it everything you had to get it. But for some reason, where Taichi was concerned, he wasn't sure. He looked at the other boy over the top of a paper bag. Hesitantly, he said, "So I'm not really cute?"

A curious look appeared on Taichi's face. "Do you want me to think you're cute?"

Daisuke looked down at his noodles. It wasn't quite the same as the ramen shop asking whether he wanted nori or egg. "I don't know. I mean... that's normal, isn't it? To want to be cute?" he finished, unsure of his words. Should he only want girls, when they giggled about whatever girls did when they got together, to think he was cute, and Taichi to think he was hot, or something? Or did that sound worse?

Taichi regarded him for a moment, and then reached out and grabbed the back of Daisuke's shirt, bringing him to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk. With the same indefinable expression on his face, he began to circle him, looking him over as he might do a science room specimen. He raised his hand to casually thumb Daisuke's cheekbone, examining his face, and then again to tug lightly on a bit of spiky hair protruding from beneath his goggles - Taichi's goggles - before moving behind him. Daisuke waited, confused, inhaling soy-chicken smell and feeling both the burn of the sun through the humid air and Taichi's nearness spring new droplets of sweat on the back of his neck. He didn't think that he'd ever been so aware of someone else's presence.

Taichi reappeared, his grin back in place. "Thought so."

Daisuke stared at him, a sudden irrational panic taking hold as he wondered what awful physical attribute of his Taichi had discovered. "You thought _what?_" he blurted.

"You're officially cute."

ooo ooo ooo

Being able to relax with food was something of a luxury for Daisuke. His parents usually stuck to just asking him to please not put his elbows on the table, but Jun, when she was home from college, was still more than capable of making up for them with a running commentary on how revolting he sounded when he ate, how he'd taken the last bread roll without asking, and a seemingly endless list of other mealtime sins. In school time, he generally preferred bumping trays in the crowded cafeteria, eating around the accidental puddles of soda left on the tables, and listening to someone else slurping their soup or cracking their gum into his ear.

Taichi's balcony was a lot better than any cafeteria. Daisuke shifted, stretching one leg, catlike, over the side of his chair, and just managing to reach far enough while still remaining balanced to wriggle his bare toes in a stripe of sun. His socks had been discarded along with his shoes at the door, and the air felt nice. He stared out over the railings, frowning a little. Taichi's building was almost parallel to his, and it was strange, in a way, to think about how they sat in different places sometimes looking out over the exact same stretch of water. He was always pleased when he discovered something new that connected Taichi and himself, however small, and he added this one carefully to the jigsaw puzzle in his mind, alongside shared appreciations like Orange Range and fried potato pancake sandwiches. He used to be happy with how big his puzzle had grown, but it had begun to frustrate him, as if it was always missing one essential piece. Sometimes he thought that Taichi's smile - his warm, more infrequent smile, rather than his shit-eating grin - might fit the space, and, once, he had found himself watching the way that Taichi's shoulders rolled as the other boy pulled off his shirt after an exhausting game and splashed a nearby bottle of water over his head, and they had looked like perfect candidates at the time.

And Taichi thought he was cute.

Did that fit?

He was still frowning when a hand brandishing a bottle of lemonade appeared in front of him. Taichi had returned from his mission to the refrigerator and was standing beside him.

"I figured I shouldn't give you beer, and Kari half-killed me the last time I drank her chocolate milk, so it was either this or regular soda." Taichi dropped the bottle onto Daisuke's lap, and returned to his own oversized floor cushion at the foot of the chair. He settled on it, one leg tucked loosely beneath him, lazy in the warmth, and took a swig of his own drink, watching Daisuke with dark, curious eyes. "You know, I kinda didn't want to interrupt you there. You looked like you were miles away. What's taking up so much of the Motomiya brain power today?"

"You," Daisuke answered, and immediately cringed, even before he saw the lift of Taichi's eyebrow. He struggled to reassure himself. Everybody always had to be thinking about something, so there wasn't any reason why it shouldn't be whoever they happened to be with. It wasn't like he was telling Taichi that he thought about him all the time, was it?

Even if that wouldn't have been all that far from the truth.

Daisuke felt the flush rising in his face again, and shifted in his chair, now both embarrassed and angry with himself. You were supposed to start thinking and caring about different kinds of stuff as you got older, but things weren't supposed to _change_, not in the ways that mattered. He'd never wanted them to change. He hadn't known that hitting his teens was supposed to mean having these feelings about one of his older friends that made him blush and feel aware of him over every inch of his skin whenever he was close to him like this, like it had never done during the crush he had once thought his gratitude for Hikari's friendship was. This was as if Taichi had an electrical field around him that Daisuke kept stumbling into. He hadn't known that it would mean making this empty space exist somewhere inside him that he didn't know how to fill. He tripped over his words in his attempt to get new ones out and smother the one still hanging in the air between them.

"I mean, not just about you, about you and me, and... it's nice here, and I don't get to do this that often, just hang out with you and talk. I know I don't get top grades, so I'm probably not the best person to help you study, but I know about more than just soccer. We can talk about anything you like," he finished, hopefully, chewing on his lower lip. Did he sound too desperate? He'd wanted to offer, not ask.

"You want to be smart? Smart like Izzy?" Taichi exhaled through his nose, a small, amused snort. "I'll just grab you a drink, show you where the power outlet is, and go watch TV for two hours. You won't notice I was ever gone."

This felt more natural. "Well, no... more cool, I guess... more like Yamato."

An odd look crossed Taichi's face, just a brief shadow of something indecipherable. "I don't just talk to Matt because he's cool," he said. Then the shadow passed as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Daisuke unsure whether or not he had just imagined it, and Taichi smiled, warm-smile. "I don't just talk to you because you're cool either."

"It's okay." Daisuke lifted his shoulders in a not-quite shrug. "You don't have to say stuff like that. I'm just me."

"Yeah. You're cool because you're you."

Daisuke felt that he should at least say 'thankyou' in some way, but before he could get the words to form themselves into some kind of order, his mind went completely blank and numb. Taichi had put his drink down on the floor beside the empty food cartons, and, reaching for Daisuke's nearest foot, swung it onto his lap. Idly, he began working it over with his strong, blunt fingers, kneading the sole and instep in a vaguely circular motion. Daisuke opened his mouth, closed it again, _goldfish_, and finally managed to produce a small throaty sound that he'd intended to be Taichi's name.

Taichi glanced up from his task, his mouth quirking up, apparently misinterpreting the look on Daisuke's face. "You ticklish, Dai?"

"No! Kind of... I don't know!" Daisuke wondered how it was possible for Taichi's touch in one inoffensive place to be sending little shivers all the way out to his fingertips. He must be strange. Maybe he was congenitally defective, and had hypersensitive skin and nerves connected up to each other that shouldn't be and all kinds of other wrong things. He swallowed, his throat feeling dry, wishing he could take a mouthful of his lemonade, but unable to turn himself to doing anything but watching the steady movements of Taichi's hands, the rhythmic flex of the tendons.

"Feels good if you've been on your feet for a long time for a game." The corner of Taichi's mouth rose higher. "And yours were in my face asking for it." He grabbed Daisuke's ankle and hauled him back as the other boy guiltily tried to pull his leg away. "_Do not move,_ Motomiya! I haven't finished the patented Magic Massage yet."

His hands weren't expert, but they were thorough. Each of Daisuke's toes was rolled in turn between Taichi's thumb and forefinger, long strokes made to the top of his foot, and gentle pressure applied to the ball. Daisuke felt himself sliding lower in his seat, instinctively stretching towards more of the sensation. It gave him such a warm, shivery-good feeling having Taichi sit at his feet and do this for him that he began to grow almost lightheaded. He felt strangely emboldened by it.

"Tai?"

"Yeah?" A thumb circled Daisuke's heel.

"We should do this again... more often."

Taichi looked up at him, and for a moment Daisuke felt not so much like a specimen as naked. Then his head moved in a slow, decisive nod, and he smiled. "Yeah. We should."

ooo ooo ooo

Jun emerged from the kitchen as Daisuke shut the apartment door behind him, toeing off his shoes. She was holding a jar of mayonnaise in one hand and a stick of celery that had obviously just been dipped in it in the other, and she took a bite of the latter, crunching as she observed him.

"People usually only have that kind of look on their faces if they've either been punched, or been kissed." She grinned, looking at her watch. "You have exactly fifty-six minutes to tell me every dirty detail before Shuu arrives."

"Yeah, well, maybe there's one Motomiya who people actually _want_ to kiss!" Daisuke retorted, but without the energy behind it that he would have liked. It was bad enough that he'd blushed in front of Taichi, but there was no way that he was going to let Jun tease him enough for him to do it in front of her, just because he resented giving her the satisfaction. Especially when it wasn't as if he _had_ been kissed by Taichi, he added silently, and instantly had a vague sense of being hurt by the thought. He went over it piece by piece, looking for the culprit. After a moment, he realized that it wasn't discomfort that that Taichi could have kissed him, but disappointment that he hadn't.

Jun pointed at him with her celery. "Hey! As a next-year-to-be-married woman, I both resent and refute that remark!"

"You put drugs in Shuu's tea. Or you tied him up in your room and tortured him with hot irons and Mom's vegetables and more painful stuff until he asked you."

"Daisuke..!" came their mother's voice from the kitchen, a note of warning in it.

Jun rolled her eyes. "It's okay, Mom, he's insulting me! The honor of your cooking's still intact!"

"Daisuke, apologize to your sister!"

"But no guy would propose to her unless she'd threatened to do something _really_ bad to him!" Daisuke paused as a thought crossed his mind that he immediately knew he never wanted to have again. "Or he'd done something really bad to her..."

"_Jun!!_"

"I'm _not_, Mom!" Jun shouted. She reached behind her and pulled the kitchen door shut, then, turning back to Daisuke, licked the tip of her finger and made two imaginary marks in the air, either side of an invisible line. "Okay," she said, pulling a face at him. "One all. But you do know I'm still going to bleed you for all the juicy information, don't you?"

"You're _disturbing_. I don't want to be related to you!" Daisuke dropped the soccer ball as he headed for his room, leaving it to roll to a corner. The sun's intense warmth was starting to fade from his bare skin, but he could still taste lemonade soda.

Chibimon was asleep in the bedroom on a pile of laundry. He was tangled up in a shirt, and the fabric of the sleeve covering the tip of his nose ballooned and deflated with the gentle puffs of breath. Daisuke found himself watching for a few moments, oddly hypnotized. For some reason, he'd never really noticed until several months after he'd first met his own digimon that they _breathed_. He'd found out quickly enough that they ate; Chibimon, no matter what form he was in, seemed to have an inbuilt radar that enabled him to instantly home in on any candy bar. But breathed? Digital creatures breathing. Even now, Daisuke still found that extremely cool. He always wanted to hold a mirror beneath Chibimon's nose when he was asleep, just to see if it fogged.

He was thinking about going to find one, when Chibimon suddenly sneezed, and opened his eyes. The blue digimon beamed at the sight of his partner and tried to jump to his feet, but the shirt was wrapped around one leg, and he ended up half rolling out of the clothes pile instead. "You're back!" he chirped, muffled in carpet.

Daisuke shook his head, snapping out of his trance. "Dude, you'll stink if you sleep on my clothes before they're washed."

Chibimon lifted his arm and sniffed at his own fur, then at the laundry. "They don't smell bad. They just smell like you." He hopped over and stood on his toes to sniff at the leg of Daisuke's shorts, nodding happily in confirmation. "You smell like Taichi today, too," he added.

Daisuke felt as if he ought to be ashamed at the images that sprang into his head at the innocuous comment, and was even more ashamed that he wasn't. He lay down on his bed, feeling slightly sick; just a strange heady, swimmy feeling inside. Chibimon, looking puzzled, followed him, and bounced on the spot, trying to grasp a corner of the sheet with his small paws so that he could climb up beside him.

"Hey, Taichi doesn't smell bad either!"

"He smells _good_," Daisuke mumbled into his pillow. He turned his head to the side, resting his cheek gratefully against the coolness.

Chibimon nodded, still bouncing, but now in a frustrated way. He was evidently aware that there was another level to Daisuke's response, but unable to grasp quite what it was. "He smelled like almonds last week when he was eating Pocky..."

"Better than almonds."

"Daisuke-smell is good to me." Chibimon stopped bouncing for the time being, and sat down on the floor. "It changes when Taichi's around, though."

"Huh?" Daisuke lifted his head. "It changes _how?_"

"I don't know." Chibimon shrugged, as if the issue wasn't particularly noteworthy to him. "It's just different. It was different when you came in, but it's gone now. And it was different when we all went to Miyako's apartment and you were sitting on the couch next to Taichi watching that movie. And Miyako's sister made cake." He brightened, back on more interesting ground. "Will she make cake for us again?"

Daisuke stared at his digimon in horror, realization creeping over him as he remembered how he had felt sitting next to Taichi that day. Miyako's couch wasn't especially roomy, and he had been almost squashed against him by Ken on his other side. He had been able to feel the breathing of both other boys - out of synch, Taichi inhaling as Ken exhaled - but he had been more aware of Taichi's. He had thought at the time that it must be because Ken's always seemed familiar, like an extension of himself; a subtle echo of their digimon's bond. Or just because Taichi was bigger.

"You can smell it when I'm _horn-_" He choked off the word, unwilling to say it, even now. That would have been defining a very specific shape for his missing puzzle piece, and he wasn't anywhere near sure enough of his feelings right now for that.

Chibimon blinked, oblivious. "What?"

"Forget it!" Daisuke buried his face in the pillow again.

Backing up across the room and taking a run at it, Chibimon made a flying leap, and managed to land on the very edge of the bed. He teetered for a moment, scrabbling with all four feet, and finally managed to haul himself onto the mattress. Plumping himself down next to his partner, he prodded him, curiously. "Daisuke? Can we play video games now like you promised?"

Daisuke sighed. He felt like heaving the biggest sigh of discontentment in the world. "Yeah," he said, after a pause. "Yeah, we can play."

He just wished that the things he wanted hadn't got so much more complicated than that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"_No spoons._" Taichi tossed his empty ice cream cup at Yamato. The other boy, who was sitting with his back against a tree, batted it back at him. "You say you're bringing ice cream for everyone, but you don't bring any spoons. Big favor that was."

"Bite me," Yamato said, lazily. He closed his eyes, resting them from the glare of the sun, and made a low noise of amusement. "As if you'd manage to get any less of it on your face _with_ a fucking spoon. It's like eating with a five year old. Or Neanderthal man."

Taichi made a face at him. "Well, if you want to get _anal_ about it -"

Yamato cracked one eye open. "Pervert."

"Oh, and _I'm_ supposed to be the fucking five year old here?"

"Fine." Yamato shrugged. "Jerk."

Taichi smirked. "Prick."

"Asshole."

"Fucker."

"You wish."

Hikari raised a hand, clearing her throat. "Uh, guys... a little decorum here? This _is_ still a public park." She was lying on her stomach, leafing through her new _Hana to Yume_, and Takeru had stretched out beside her, half-reading over her shoulder. His hand rested at the small of her back, not possessive or overtly intimate, but comfortable. If they had ever kissed each other with more than that same quiet, unspoken affection, Daisuke had never seen it. It was funny how he had started off resenting Takeru, then both of them because he thought they had the relationship that he hadn't, and now he had finished up just envious that they were happy with something so small, and he wanted too much.

Yamato laughed, settling easily against his tree again. Taichi grinned round at them all, the light breeze that was fractionally alleviating the heat lifting his bangs as he turned his head. "Sorry."

"Not a problem," Iori said, calmly. He sat back and scanned the immediate area, checking for any more scattered litter from their picnic before he began the long search for a trash can. His gaze alighted on Daisuke, who was scraping up the last of his ice cream with his finger. "Daisuke, are you almost done?"

Daisuke looked down into his cup at the last pink strawberry smears. "I guess so," he said, pushing it away slightly reluctantly. The hot dogs they'd filled up on first had been good, and the ice cream that Yamato had produced afterwards with a flourish - but no spoons - even better. They had all made short, sticky work of it after a lot of laughter, and nobody faster than Taichi, despite his complaints. Daisuke felt an unsatisfying sting of pride that not only had he eaten as much as Taichi himself, but that he had managed to do it while sitting near him for over an hour. He'd thought that his throat would seize up instead, but it hadn't, and he'd eaten, still aware of Taichi in his peripheral vision, licking chocolate sauce from his fingers, even when he wasn't looking directly at him. He'd been almost afraid to do that too often in case someone noticed it. With their four friends there, Taichi had seemed like a five thousand yen note lying on an empty sidewalk. He hadn't dared to reach out his hand in case there was a loud and sudden shout.

Taichi, he realized, was now looking at _him_ - or, more accurately, at the front of his t-shirt. "You had a few problems yourself there, Dai?"

Guiltily, Daisuke shot a glance down at himself, relieved when he was only faced with a drip pattern of ice cream stains. He scratched the back of his neck self-consciously, trying for an answering grin. "Well, messy is good, right? If you ate so fast you had to make a mess it means you enjoyed it."

The corner of Hikari's mouth twitched. "There's _some_ logic in that..." she said, slowly.

Taichi swung round to face Yamato, beaming. "See?" he said, triumphantly. "That's a guy after my own heart, right over there!"

"As if that's a compliment," Yamato said, and Takeru was the one to laugh out loud this time.

"Okay, quit it! Which of us here are the youngest here, again..?"

"He just doesn't have the right amount of appreciation for his food." Taichi gave Daisuke a quick wink. "Wanna eat more noodles with me in front of him, Dai, and really turn him off it?"

Daisuke swallowed, trying not to make it audible. He hadn't expected Taichi to mention anything about their afternoon together again, not after his unexpected touch and his own reaction. Probably everything had been perfectly normal and he was just weird and had made them both uncomfortable. Puzzled, vaguely resentful, he wondered if Taichi was trying to tease him, make it a private joke, but the cheerful expression on the other boy's face didn't reveal it if he was. Working all of this out was a minute by minute game, he thought, and he was still light years away from winning.

"I have to get moving." Yamato began to rise to his feet, pointedly brushing a few stray crumbs from his clothes. "Much as I'd _love_," he added, dryly, "to listen to a story about your adventures in noodles."

Taichi looked up, surprised, his smile fading a little. "Hey, where d'you think you're going? Sit down! Let's all make a day of it - I figured we could go over to Leisure Land later and do some bowling!"

"I said I'd run through a few songs today with the guys." Yamato's shoulders dropped as he saw the flat look on Taichi's face, and he exhaled. "Look, Tai, I'm sorry, okay? We have that gig this Saturday, and I've got a ton of shit to work out before then."

"Sure." Taichi leaned back on his elbows, turning his head away. "No problem. More important than spending time hanging out with kids, isn't it? I mean, they're your friends, not to mention your own fucking brother, but hey, what the hell, huh?"

"Don't be a jackass," Yamato said, a sudden snap in his voice. Daisuke had seen him change as quickly as he could blink sometimes, going from languid and joking one minute to ice cold the next, and it scared him, frankly. Miyako would come out with it straight away and yell at him with everything right up front there in her face, and he could just yell right back at her, but when someone built it up under a seamless exterior and then spat it out when he'd thought everything was okay, it scared him. He shifted, trapped, as he was, between Yamato and Taichi, unsure of where to look.

Hikari didn't lift her head from her magazine, but it was clear that she wasn't reading the words on the page that she was looking at any more by the way that her lips were pressed together, like she was trying to hold something in. Takeru propped his chin up on his hand, frowning.

"Tai, it doesn't matter. We can go Friday evening... I assume we're all free then?" he added, looking around, his eyes telegraphing a silent request; _help me out here, guys_. There were murmurs of acceptance. "I'm cool with that, anyway..."

"We've hardly seen him for two fucking weeks!" Taichi twisted his head back to Yamato, looking up at him through eyes not just narrowed by the brightness of the sky behind him. "_I've_ hardly seen you! Jyou's already getting ready for college, and this is the last summer before you, me and Sora graduate. Who the fuck knows what we'll be doing this time next year? I figured at least some of us could get together today and have a good time and forget about all that shit. And you want to go and rehearse with your dumbass band."

"It's _alright_," Iori said, quietly. "None of us mind."

"_I_ mind." Taichi held Yamato's gaze for a moment, then grabbed up a half-eaten bag of chips and very deliberately began to poke around in it with a finger. "Go on, then. What are you hanging around here for? Go and practise being a big fucking superstar."

Yamato stared at him. He slowly shook his head. "Whatever. Stay and act like a dick in front of everyone if you like. I'm out of here."

Taichi didn't look at his back as he left. For what seemed like an eternity, but was, in truth, only a minute, nobody spoke.

Eventually, Takeru said, "He tries to make time. It's not as if he doesn't know who his friends are. He just gets so involved when he's got something like this coming up... you know how he gets."

"He needs to try a lot damn harder." Taichi stared at the bag, and then abruptly crushed the whole thing in his hand, throwing it on the floor. He ran his hand roughly through his hair. "Asshole," he muttered, although he didn't seem to be talking about Yamato any more.

Takeru was silent for another few moments. He was mellower on the surface than his brother, and his sense of humor was less caustic, but he still had that same door just behind his eyes sometimes that made it hard to know what he was really thinking. Then he squeezed Hikari's arm, lightly. "Want to go down to the lake for a while?"

She nodded, her eyes on Taichi as she stood up. "I think that might be a good idea."

"I'll follow you as far as the gate, if that's alright," Iori said. "I could use a walk about now..."

Daisuke found himself staring awkwardly down at his sneakers as the three of them walked off across the grass. He'd waited to be alone with Taichi all day, but you could feel this atmosphere; it lingered like some huge, uninvited guest, shutting their thoughts off from each other, and he didn't like it at all. It was so tangible that he jumped when Taichi's voice cut into the silence.

"Are you gonna say anything? Or are you gonna fuck off now, too?"

Daisuke stared at him, still startled. "No! I mean... I'm not going anywhere!"

"You don't want to call me a jerk?"

Daisuke wondered if it was supposed to be a trick question. He couldn't tell from Taichi's expression. "Why would I want to call you that?"

"You should do." Taichi smiled a bit, but there was no humor in it, much less warmth. "But I guess you always did have some idea that I was perfect, didn't you?"

Daisuke felt color rising in his face for what seemed like the thousandth time, all the more angrily because it was true. "You know, I'm not just some little brother following you around because you tell me to and I don't know any better! I wasn't even when I was a kid."

"Never said you were."

"Yeah, well..." Daisuke rubbed at some dirt on the side of his sneaker. He was making this worse instead of better. It was like getting stranded out on his own, midfield; whichever way he turned, he seemed to run into more trouble. "You're cool most of the time. But you're a jerk when you fight with your friends. Maybe."

Taichi picked up the small, crushed bag of potato chips. His fingers worked slowly in a half-hearted attempt to flatten out the plastic. "The band isn't dumb," he said. "They're _good_, fucking good. And he probably is gonna be a star one day, because he's got the talent. He's always had that special thing going on for him. I just want a piece of him before all of that happens. Does that make _me_ dumb?"

"No." Daisuke shook his head, trying to look as sympathetic as he knew how. "It just means you're his best friend, doesn't it?"

"Yeah." That odd look Daisuke had seen before ghosted across Taichi's face, like it was more in response to something inside his own head. "Yeah," he said, again, a little louder this time. "It does."

"You could call him later."

"I could," Taichi echoed, although, to Daisuke, he didn't sound particularly convinced. He picked at the bag again, and his face twisted in a grimace. "Should have kept my damn mouth shut today, shouldn't I? Didn't have to go at it when you were here."

Daisuke imagined that it was probably a plural 'you', but still, it was nice to think that Taichi might be even a little concerned about how he looked in front of him. He shook his head. "No. It's okay. I've just had enough fights at home with Jun and... well, only with Jun, really."

"You don't have to see her for half the year now she's in junior college, though, right?"

"Yeah, but she keeps coming back. I can't wait 'til she's married."

"I haven't gotten to talk to Jyou about much more than school for a while." Taichi's smile returned, more genuinely this time. "Jun and Shuu are still engaged? Good for her. I always kinda liked your sister, even when she was bugging Matt."

Daisuke pulled a face. He was ready to freely admit these days that sometimes he didn't mind Jun all that much, like when she made curry bread for him from scratch because their mom couldn't get it at the store, or helped him with homework. He'd sit at the table with an evening's supply of soda and cookies and grouch about his math out loud, and she'd yell back the answers from the couch during breaks in the action of her soap operas, punctuated occasionally by an 'idiot' or a roll of her eyes. It felt like denying some fundamental world truth, though, to admit that she was the sort of person you might actually _like_. "She's not happy unless she can bug somebody. She's like that."

Taichi sat back, stretching his legs. "Nah. She's funny. And I bet she's a good listener if you give her the chance." The t-shirt he was wearing was just marginally too small, as if he'd shrunk it in the wash by mistake, and as he moved, it rode up from his beltline, exposing a strip of flat, toned belly.

"She doesn't listen to _me_, but I have to listen to _her_ talking all the time." Daisuke fought to remember that he must have seen the same thing before, a hundred times, but now he was barely able to stop himself drooling, much less staring. Was it even hotter today? Even under the canopy of the trees, the air felt close, heavy, like it wasn't giving him quite enough oxygen. "I hope her and Shuu find a place, or they'll move into her room. And then I'll have to listen to them all night!" he finished, suitably horrifying himself with the thought, despite his distraction.

"Still grosses you out, huh?" Taichi sounded amused.

Daisuke hated feeling like this in front of Taichi, like he was eleven years old again, even if he was only being teased. "It does when it's _Jun!_ It wouldn't if it was..."

"Somebody else? Who you liked?"

It wasn't what Daisuke had really wanted to say, but he realized that Taichi was doing the work for him, giving him an easy way out, although he was faintly disappointed in himself for taking it. He sighed a little, just a shallow exhalation of air. "Yeah."

There was a short silence. Taichi tilted his head to one side, regarding him once again with that odd, curious expression. Gradually, a half-grin began to form. "You missed a bit," he said.

Daisuke blinked, uncomprehending. "I did what?"

"Here -" Taichi reached across the space between them and, carefully avoiding the bruise that had now come out, spreading from his eye, cupped Daisuke's cheek, indicating that he should turn his head. He wiped a strawberry-flavored smear from the corner of his mouth with the pad of his thumb. It lingered on the cushion of Daisuke's lower lip. It seemed nothing short of incredible that hands that had moved so surely and firmly over him a few days before could be almost obscenely gentle now, and heat flooded his belly as he permitted himself to wonder, for the first time, how they might feel on other parts of his body. He imagined Taichi not stopping at his feet and ankles, but stroking his thighs; Taichi's hand doing what only his own had done before and dropping between them to fondle and squeeze him. He shivered at the image, and his hand shot up involuntarily to grab the other boy's wrist. Normal people couldn't feel like this, could they? It was too much for anyone to handle.

"Hey, if I do something you don't like, just hit me, 'kay?" Taichi pulled his hand back, although he didn't attempt to free it from Daisuke's. His voice still sounded as if there was the same familiar laughter in it somewhere below the surface, but it had dropped an octave and taken on a throatier tone. In a matter of minutes, something had shifted, and Daisuke was painfully aware that this was no longer just fooling around.

His wrist sagged, his hand still holding Taichi's, but no longer with the ability to exert any force. His own voice cracked, and he nearly had to turn his head away to cough, but he struggled back from the brink, and when he spoke, it sounded huskier than he had intended. "I liked it too much."

His hand dropped from Taichi's completely to lie, shaking, in his lap, but he somehow managed not to let his gaze follow it. He'd look him in the face if it killed him.

"You're so cute." His voice growing even lower, Taichi moved to kneel in front of Daisuke, reaching up to ruffle his hair, petting him. Touch, tease, stroke, _feel_. Taichi was close enough now for his breath to land on his skin in little puffs when he spoke, and Daisuke's hands clenched into fists in the effort not to immediately touch back, not to look too needy. He almost gasped when Taichi ducked his head to the side to murmur into his ear, his cheek a hairsbreadth away from his own. "What about kissing? Does that gross you out?"

"I don't know - I haven't - I -" Daisuke broke off. He hadn't kissed in the way that he knew Taichi meant, and he was aware enough of the difference to know that it would soon become blindingly obvious if he tried to lie. He squeezed his eyes shut in angry embarrassment, feeling certain that there probably wasn't anything else in the world so guaranteed to turn Taichi off. "Guess you have something new to laugh at me for now, huh?"

Taichi shrugged, slowly, like they were moving in water. His fingers combed through Daisuke's hair again as if nothing had happened to make them interrupt it, twirled a reddish-brown bang. "No. I never laugh at you. Why would I?"

"Because I'm me. And I do stuff - and don't do stuff - that makes people laugh."

"Well, I don't want to laugh." Taichi drew back, far enough to meet his eyes, but still leaving their faces only a few inches apart. "I just want to make you happy."

After being stretched so taut inside by the wait, the pressure of Taichi's lips on his, not quite as soft as a girl's, was almost an anti-climax at first. But when Daisuke felt him lap gently at his mouth, not hovering like his thumb had, but seeking entrance, it seemed to coax forth a new depth of sensation, and suddenly his mouth was opening too and he was flying, stumbling over himself to respond. And even when he leaned in and his goggles bumped, clumsy, against Taichi's forehead, it didn't matter; nothing in the world mattered, because Taichi's tongue was still sliding against his.

ooo ooo ooo

Nothing had ever made him feel like Taichi's mouth did. Not even when they ended up first back at Taichi's conveniently empty apartment, and then somehow on his bed, his confident but reassuring hands helping Daisuke off with his clothes as he murmured secrets into his ear, soft, dirty, teasing words that made Daisuke harder than his touch. Not even when he spread his shaking fingers either side of Taichi's belly, feeling the muscles twitch beneath the skin, and ran them from there up to his chest, trying to memorize the lines of him; hip hollow, rib, nipple. Not even when they spooned together and Taichi's hand covered his, guiding them both down to make a double fist around him, and he shut his eyes tight against the sun that was pouring into the room and just let it beat down on his face and his chest and his legs as the two of them stroked.

Taichi slid closer, bringing his erection to rest in the hollow formed by the backs of Daisuke's thighs. "Mmm," he said, sounding happy, and then moved back and forth a bit, and Daisuke felt a warm, sucking kiss land in the crook of his neck. "S'nice..."

"Nice," Daisuke echoed, stupidly. He felt as if he ought to be doing more, reciprocating more; at the very least trying harder to show Taichi how he was making him feel, but when Taichi's erection had touched his skin, even hotter than the other boy's mouth, his mind had gone white-blank. He managed to brace his foot against the bed and pushed backwards into Taichi's chest, just wanting to be held close while these things were happening to him, however uncool that was. Their bodies slid a little in the thin sheen of sweat between them that he was vaguely aware was neither all his own or solely because of the temperature in the room. The space between their legs, sealed in, became a moist, slippery pocket of heat, and Taichi gave a low grunt as his hips bucked forward into it, his breath tickling Daisuke's ear.

"Feels _good,_ Dai."

"Please..." _More._ Ungainly, his pulse throbbing heavily in his temples and his groin, Daisuke tried to raise his leg a little to give Taichi room to move again. It was difficult, his muscles feeling like liquid and refusing to move in the way that he wanted them to, but he managed it somehow, allowing Taichi's erection to slip between his thighs and rub against him in a way that made him tighten up all over. He was close to coming; could have come in another few heartbeats if Taichi hadn't removed his hand from his erection, swiftly uncurling Daisuke's fingers as he did and bringing his with it, and he was unable to hold back his squeak of disappointment.

"Ssh..." Taichi leaned over him, nuzzling his cheek and the side of his mouth. Daisuke's lips parted, instinctively searching for him, making the shape of a kiss in the air, or perhaps a word that had somehow been forgotten halfway along its journey from his brain. Before he could recall it, anyway, Taichi was gone, pulling away and leaving him feeling intensely lonely. As he listened to the rattle-slide of the nightstand drawer behind him, Daisuke wondered if it made him look as desperate and inexperienced as he was to keep touching his own body, or whether it was something that Taichi might like, might enjoy watching. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to behave. He'd enjoyed the same thing himself often enough, hadn't he, felt warm just seeing Taichi lazily run his hands over his chest as they came back down from a stretch? He remembered all these things now that it seemed safe to bring them out.

Should he be making more noise? Daisuke wanted to moan; it was constantly welling up in his throat, but it felt as if it was going to be a weird sound, and he didn't want Taichi to think he did weird things during sex. He bit his lip instead, but still he couldn't stop his hands moving, shakily tracing the damp creases of his thighs, darting up to brush at his nipples. He'd never felt all that much there before, but maybe he just hadn't paid them much attention. He felt different now. He needed to touch himself everywhere. Every pore of his skin seemed to be awake and tingling.

"You gonna save some for me?" The bed dipped as Taichi rolled back up behind him. There was still a smile in his voice, but it was rougher now, as if he was breathing heavily, and his fingers were rougher too as he pushed them into Daisuke's hair, pulling him close. Daisuke leaned back into him, frustrated by the formlessness of it, and, more than anything, wanting Taichi to stroke him again. His erection felt so demanding that he barely noticed Taichi's other hand running down his back and around the curve of his ass.

When Taichi touched his entrance, he jerked, pure reflex making him try to clamp his legs shut. With a supreme effort of will, Daisuke forced himself to relax his cramped muscles and tentatively let himself _feel._ Taichi's fingers were wet and cold with something, but they quickly warmed to Daisuke's own heat, and as they circled and teased, a sensation began to build, different from the ache of his erection. This was a twitchy, strangely urgent feeling that raised goosebumps and made him half want to pull away, but as he squirmed slowly, all his body seemed to be trying to do was answer Taichi's movements, as if they both knew somehow what would feel good but his train of conscious thought had been left out of the loop. A shudder went through him as a thumbnail grazed the soft skin inside his thigh, and then he gasped as the tip of Taichi's slippery finger suddenly dipped inside. His voice shook, and sounded far too loud in the small room. "_Tai..!_"

"You okay?"

"I'm okay." He said it again, more determined this time. "I'm okay." And he was. Okay with Taichi's finger inside him, okay with the way that Taichi was starting to make small thrusts against him, okay with the slight shock as his muzzy brain fully accepted the idea that the touching wasn't play and that there was going to be something a lot bigger inside him soon that was probably going to hurt. Okay with the way that Taichi was breathing that said that once he started, it probably wouldn't be all that easy to get him to stop. Daisuke found it hard to imagine _wanting_ him to stop. Not now, not after this... waiting. He shuddered again, more violently, as the finger slid deeper. This uncertainty. "Tai?" he blurted, without thinking.

"Mm?"

"Do... do you like me?" Stupid thing to say. But he had to know.

Taichi's movements slowed, and then, after a brief pause, he nuzzled Daisuke's neck, and Daisuke could feel the shape of his grin. "Yeah. Course I like you."

He really did like the feel of Taichi's mouth, and the way that his tongue lapped at the curve of his ear just before he brought his hips flush with Daisuke's ass and began to push in. Maybe that was why, when he dozed in the curve of Taichi's arm afterwards, he dreamed about it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Daisuke's mother had finished sorting the laundry. There was a rule in the apartment during vacation that whoever was the least busy at any particular time had to help with chores. "Daisuke!"

Daisuke flung himself lengthwise along the couch where he had been curled up watching old anime with Chibimon, throwing down the TV remote and grabbing for the cordless handset lying, silent, on the table at the end. "I'm on the phone!" he yelled hurriedly.

"Jun!"

"I'm studying!" Jun called back, from behind the half-closed door of her room.

Their mother made her decision. "Daisuke!"

Letting the phone drop again, Daisuke rolled off the couch in defeat with a sigh that he hoped was loud enough for his mother to hear. It felt strange for some reason when she deposited the laundry basket in his arms, as if the bland routine of the action was at odds with he emotions still thumping inside his chest. They were so strong that he was almost amazed that nobody had asked him about them; he felt as though the stink of pleasure must be detectable at fifteen paces. The dull ache and burn of his muscles felt like a delicious secret, because even pain could be savored when it meant everything had gone alright in the end, like coming off the soccer field with the skin scraped off his knees after a four-nil win.

He'd had sex. It thrummed in Daisuke's brain as he headed for the laundry room, too big to be processed coherently yet into anything beyond that singular thought. He'd had sex with _Taichi_. He'd always just kind of taken it for granted that his first time would be with a girl, but the fuzzy images in his mind had faded the moment Taichi had wrapped his arms around his naked body, squeezed out of existence, and he suddenly couldn't imagine wanting it to happen any other way. He'd come all over Taichi's hand and onto his bedsheet way too quick, and Taichi hadn't laughed at it or laughed at him; it hadn't taken him much longer after that to come himself. Daisuke had found it almost impossible to wipe the grin from his face. He'd wanted random strangers to stop him in the street on the way home and ask him what good thing had happened.

Daisuke chewed on his bottom lip. Was he supposed to call Taichi today, or should he wait for Taichi to call him? The couple of dates he'd been on had been too casual to worry about things like the next day, and he really wasn't sure what was expected, but he was amazed by how badly he wanted to call, just to get another fix of Taichi's voice. Daisuke tried to remember if he'd always loved his voice this much, and decided that he couldn't not have. He frowned, still excited, but uncertain. Would he look a bit _too_ enthusiastic if he called right away?

He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he gave a yelp of shock when Jun's door flew open as he passed it, and another dozen or so items of laundry were dumped on top of his already overflowing basket. "Hey -!"

"Wow, what great timing you've got there, Dai! Congratulations!"

Swaying off balance with the sudden extra weight, Daisuke shoved the basket against the wall and braced it there while he tried to readjust his hands. "Thought you were so busy _studying!_"

Jun grinned back at him. "Well, I guess I must have finished already. Aren't I smart?" She rolled her eyes as she watched Daisuke try to support the basket with his knee, almost falling over in the process. "Oh, put it down, dummy! You grab that side. Never let it be said that I'm not a wonderful, helpful big sister."

The basket between them, they made their way down to the area off the bathroom that was designated the laundry room. Their father had got the idea into his head the year before that they should buy a clothes dryer, which, as their mother had confidently predicted, was worse than useless, taking hours to dry anything more than a shirt or two and turning the room into a sauna in this weather, and now it stood silently and resentfully in the corner like some squat white fossil. The laundry room was barely more than a cubbyhole as it was, and the addition of the dryer made it hard now for more than one person at a time to get in, let alone move. Daisuke randomly stuffed as many clothes as he could manage into the washing machine, and stared at it for a moment. He should add the detergent next, shouldn't he? All of the boxes and bottles on the shelf seemed to be laundry-related, and he had the nagging feeling that there was a reason that there were different ones, but he figured that they all had to be, when it came down to basics, made to wash clothes with. Daisuke grabbed a cheerful-looking blue bottle with a large brand logo and a lot of bright sunburst designs on the label, and twisted the cap off. It smelled a bit more than his clean clothes usually did, he thought, kind of fake-lemony. Probably that all got rinsed out in the machine or something.

"You still have no idea what you're doing with this, do you?" Jun commented, from where she was now leaning against the doorframe.

Daisuke eyed her, still holding the bottle in one hand and the cap in the other. "_What?_"

"Oh, nothing. I just wouldn't dump that in the machine neat unless you want to be playing in the first soccer match next term in a blotchy pink shirt instead of a red one." Whisking the bottle out of his hands and returning it to the shelf out of harm's way, she replaced it with a large yellow box of powder. "That's bleach. _That_ is detergent."

Daisuke made an effort not to scowl, that seeming to be something that Sulky Kid Daisuke would do rather than a Daisuke that Taichi wanted to be with. He always had a hard time imagining Taichi feeling like a kid in the way that he did, even when he was younger than Daisuke was now, and Taichi had felt even less like a kid when he'd been gripping Daisuke's hips and panting against his ear. "If you're not going to help, why are you even _here?_" he demanded.

Jun folded her arms. "Because I wanted somewhere to corner you, so I could find out why you've been walking around with a goofy smile plastered on your face and why you haven't moved more than four feet from the phone all morning." A slight grin formed. "Daisuke... are you in love?"

The detergent box that Daisuke had been pouring from bumped against the machine, causing a snowfall of powder to dust the floor and Jun to make a 'tch' sound. "Don't say it like that!" he mumbled. It sounded so... _girlish_, coming from her, like he had Taichi's name written all over his school notebooks, all pink, with sketchy flowers around it: 'TAICHI'. Not like the hot tidal wave of pure, hungry feeling that had swept over him when Taichi's lips met his. For the first time, Daisuke felt like he actually understood love, even just one small part of it. It wasn't wanting to get a cellophane-wrapped box of store candy from someone on Valentine's Day; it was wanting them to touch you so badly that it ached, inside and out.

"I don't have to _say_ anything when you're about as subtle as your digimon whenever he sees me baking cookies... are you going to finish putting that detergent in or not?" Jun watched him curiously, her head on one side, as he closed the lid of the machine and, after a slight hesitation, tried switching it on. It started to produce a loud humming, gurgling noise that seemed normal enough. "Can I ask one question?" she said, after a minute, sounding oddly thoughtful.

"You can _ask_." Daisuke glanced at the washing machine, wondering if it was safe to leave it on its own, or if it was just waiting until he'd gone to pretend it was overloaded and flood the room. He still didn't altogether trust it.

"Does he really know how you feel?"

Daisuke's head jerked round, and he was unable to keep the expression of disbelief from spreading over his face. He knew girls were supposed to have some kind of weird intuition, but this was almost scary.

Jun pulled a slight face at him in reply. "Don't freak out - I haven't discovered new psychic powers or anything. You just never acted like this about either of those girls you took on those supposed dates. Or even about Hikari, really - it was more like you were trying to prove something with her. Oh, I don't know." She waved her hand, as if dismissing her train of thought. "Not even you could just have been that emotionally immature."

"I'm not - _immature!_" Daisuke was so stunned that he had difficulty picking out what to respond to first. "And anyway, why does that have to mean I like -"

"Dai, when you're around someone you _really_ like, you aren't very good at hiding it."

Daisuke stared back at her. Even through his excitement, he felt vaguely uncomfortable with the revelation that he'd been monitored on a level that he hadn't known about, as if every memory he had of the past three years would always look different now. He set his jaw. Okay, let her make fun of him. What did it matter to her whether he liked a girl or a guy?

Except that she wasn't making fun, that he could tell. She actually sounded like she... well, cared. "Now, I'm not going to say who it is that I've got in mind right now, so you don't have to answer one way or the other. But I guess that _something's_ happened with him that meant a lot, so I want to make sure of one thing. Is he being nice to you?"

Daisuke wondered if he was going to blush again. Jun would still love that, he thought. "Yeah," he said, softly. "Yeah - he's really nice."

"He doesn't do stuff you can't handle?"

Daisuke did scowl this time, lifting his chin. "I can handle everything just fine!" As she began to turn in the doorway, the convinced look on his face faded a little. His hand strayed to his mouth, and he chewed at a fingernail. Jun, his ditzy, gossipy sister - did she have those same feelings about Shuu when she was near him, like her heart was beating so hard it wanted to jump out of her chest? Was that possible?

"Jun -" he said, hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"Should I call him? I mean, I really want to call him, but I don't want to sound -"

"Desperate?" Jun grinned. Her smile became gentler as she stood back, considering him. "Is that how you look when you talk to him? Like he's your whole world and then some?"

Daisuke shrugged, just a barely perceptible lift of his shoulders. She nodded, knowingly, as if that was answer enough.

"He'll call you."

ooo ooo ooo

"Dai?"

Taichi called late afternoon, the scratchy-warmth of his voice in his ear still giving Daisuke a little shock of relief and pleasure when he picked up, even though he'd been prepared for it. He wondered if Taichi would ever stop being special and exciting to him like that, and decided immediately that he really hoped that he wouldn't. "Hey," he said, trying to keep his own voice steady.

"Hey, yourself." There was a faint undercurrent of amusement in Taichi's tone, but that was okay; that was just him, and Daisuke knew he'd never want it any other way. He liked it when Taichi laughed, because he did it as if he thought Daisuke was funny and fun to be around, not as if he thought he was an idiot. Taichi was always laughing _with_ him, on his level, not down at him, even if Daisuke didn't quite follow the joke sometimes. Maybe he just found life funny. His voice, though, still sounded softer when he spoke again. "You doing okay?"

Daisuke felt his stomach turn over, just a small twist of remembered pleasure. "Yeah," he said, breathlessly. "I'm great!" Then, hastily trying to play down his enthusiasm just a little, "No, really... I'm really good."

"Good." The smile was back; he could hear it. "Your mom planning dinner any time soon, or can you be kidnapped for a while?"

Daisuke's toes squirmed in the carpet pile as he felt his own mouth twitch. "I was kind of hoping I would be..."

"Sit tight. I'll see you in five." With that order, the phone went down none too gently at Taichi's end, leaving Daisuke standing next to the couch with a grin on his face, breathing through his mouth the way he did when he had a cold or in spring when the cedar pollen was heavy. Now, though, instead of wanting to sneeze, he felt more like letting out a yell that they'd hear three apartments below.

"Well, you look stupid," Jun commented as she walked past, only pausing to grab the TV guide from the table. Before Daisuke could manage to arrange his thoughts sufficiently to fire off a comeback, she brushed against him, ducking her head against his and lowering her voice. "But you still look better now you're smiling again."

He looked up at her, half-surprised. She gave him a quick wink. "Not going to go and make yourself look cute for him?"

"I do not look _cute!_" Not to her, anyway. "I look _cool!_"

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you want to believe." She was still grinning.

Daisuke left Chibimon still happily transfixed by the TV, crunching his way through a plate of leftover arare crackers. He was always surprised at just how much he missed his digimon when he wasn't around, as if he'd misplaced a small but very noticeable part of himself, but he wasn't sure he was quite ready yet to go into the details of how things were with Taichi, or not fold up on the sidewalk with the embarrassment if Chibimon decided to blithely announce that he smelled funny again. Outside on the landing, he pressed the elevator call button, and waited for a few moments with tightly-wound impatience.

"Come on," he urged under his breath, "come _on..!_" He knew Taichi would have just come up and called at his door, like everyone always did, and there was absolutely no reason that he had to go all the way downstairs and wait outside the building, but he had been gripped by a sudden mild panic about not wanting all of this to be any effort whatsoever for Taichi, about making it the easiest and most rewarding thing that he'd ever done.

Daisuke's mouth opened to let out a relieved sigh when the arrow on the elevator's display switched from down to up, but it died halfway when the floor number showed no sign of changing to match it. "Oh, for..!" Why wasn't it _moving?_ There was probably someone down on the first floor, keeping the doors open while they loaded in their shopping bags, like his mother used to get him to do for her when he'd got tall enough to reach the button. Daisuke thumbed it a few more times. He was aware of the futility of the action, but, he thought, as he gave up and headed for the stairs, it had still made him feel better.

The concrete stairwell was remarkably cool, but outside the doors of the building, the heat hit him again like a physical force, sucking the energy of a minute ago out of him, and he sank down to sit on the steps. His eyes automatically slitted against the white-hot glare of the sun off the sidewalk. Other people always seemed to be prepared for days like this, relaxed in light, skimpy clothes and dark glasses, and he was sitting there in a t-shirt and his oldest cargo shorts feeling intermittent droplets of sweat trickle down from between his shoulder blades to pool uncomfortably in the small of his back. But that wasn't going to stop him enjoying himself, milking his time with Taichi, now he had it, for every precious second possible. Odds-on, if Taichi had called him so fast and was now coming over to take him out, he was feeling pretty happy about what they'd done himself. What they had now, Daisuke supposed, was a proper date.

A smile tweaked at his mouth at the thought, stronger for being involuntary, and he sat upright, tugging at the hem of his shirt to straighten it. "I have a _date!_" he said proudly, out loud, and steadfastly ignored a group of girls in Lolita dresses who giggled at him as they walked past. Expectantly, still grinning, he turned his head to look down the street, preparing to scan the pedestrians for a familiar shock of dark hair. And felt it freeze on his face as his stomach gave an instant lurch.

For a few seconds, he was at a loss. He wondered if somebody might have thought that it would be a great idea for them to double-date, but that seemed unlikely when there'd only been a 'them' for a few hours. He knew that he didn't want, right now, to listen to the comment that Sora made, or the answering laughs of Taichi and another slightly shorter boy with fair hair, but he still kept looking, kept watching them as they approached him, trying to swallow the feeling that, before he'd even known it was sneaking up on him, he'd been cheated. He felt like he'd brought his foot back to take a long, desperate shot for the winning goal, only to have one of his teammates take the ball and tap it into the corner without breaking a sweat.

Taichi had brought other people along.

"Target sighted!" Taichi hollered as he spotted him, striking a dramatic pose on the sidewalk and apparently oblivious to the several people who narrowly avoided colliding with him. Sora, slightly more aware, immediately grabbed his arm, and he glanced around him, grinning ruefully, as he let himself be hauled over to the steps and out of the flow of pedestrians. Looking down at Daisuke, still grinning, he waggled his eyebrows. "Well? You all set to be rescued, Dai?"

Daisuke stared at him, confused. "Rescued?" he managed to say.

"Yeah! We're on a mission this afternoon to rescue as many people as we can find from dying of terminal boredom!"

"But so far, all they've managed to do is pick me up from school," put in Sora. "My heroes," she added, jokingly.

The other boy beamed widely at her. "I'd be your hero anytime!"

Taichi leaned over to cuff him loosely around the back of the head. "Dai, you know Toshiki? Not that he's easy to avoid, but everyone keeps trying."

"Hi!" Toshiki said enthusiastically, though it seemed like he was the kind of person who was just enthusiastic about everything. "You're captain of the Junior High team, right? You guys are good!"

Daisuke felt his jaw tighten, the angry disappointment burning in his throat as threatened tears for a moment. _No,_ he thought, _I don't know you. I don't want to know you. All I wanted to do today was see him._ But then the faintest breeze swirled around the corner of the building, even just that few degrees change in temperature such a contrast on the heat of his bare arms that he gave a small shiver, and the fight seemed to ebb inside him as quickly as it had come. Daisuke sighed inwardly. He probably wasn't being fair. Maybe Taichi was acting like he was in front of the others, like nothing had changed, because he wasn't ready to talk about it to anyone else yet? He'd never known Taichi to be embarrassed about telling people what was on his mind before, but there was always a first time, he supposed, and maybe it _had_ been just as important and special for Taichi as it was for him. The thought made him feel better, a small, weak hope trembling inside again like the heart of a chick. And he couldn't reasonably expect to have Taichi to himself _all_ of the time.

"Yeah," he answered, trying to sound more cheerful. "Thanks." Now the hot haze in his mind had faded a little, the other boy did, in fact, look familiar, and not just for being a friend of Taichi's. "Hey," he said, with sudden realization, "you play in High School goal! You made that awesome save against Misato Kogyo in the first game this season!" He'd been one of the people yelling the loudest at the time, as Toshiki had picked himself up out of the dirt, grinning from ear to ear, and briefly turned to give the spectators a mock bow.

Taichi smirked. "Don't remind him about it. We had to listen to shit about he was the greatest all week after that."

Toshiki stuck out his tongue. "Sora cheered."

"I was kind of cheering for the whole team..." Sora looked halfway between nonplussed and amused. Turning to Daisuke, she put her head on one side, wincing a bit as she looked at his bruise. "Ow. I guess that was a ball? Same thing happened to me once!"

Oh. Yeah. He'd forgotten that she used to play too. "Yeah. Jun put a lot of ice on it when it started showing. Mom wanted to try and hide it with makeup in case it looked like I'd been fighting or something." He wrinkled his nose. "But that'd be too girly."

"Well, at least I didn't have to worry about that." Sora smiled. The sun was starting to pop freckles across the bridge of her nose. "My treat today if we go get ice cream?"

The cheerful, unpractised willingness of everyone to immediately include him made Daisuke feel even more guilty about his initial flood of resentment. When Taichi slung his arm loosely around his shoulders as they fell into step, his first reaction was that he didn't deserve the spasm of pleasure, but it didn't come any less powerfully for it.

He glanced up. Taichi flashed him a wink. The gesture suddenly seemed so enticing that Daisuke nearly stumbled on the sidewalk as if he was drunk.

They sat outside the American-style ice cream shop while Sora went in with the orders, squashed together, the sun-heated bench burning the backs of their knees. The cutesy sunshades being carried past by girls at intervals and the huge bunch of slogan-printed balloons bobbing above an advertising stall that had been set up outside the electrical store opposite made Daisuke think vaguely of a carnival, and the colors, coupled with the press of Taichi's shoulder against his, contributed to the slight upswing in his mood. He jiggled his leg a little, just a gentle up-down bounce and still a long way from dancing. Finding a leftover stick of bubblegum in his pocket, he began to unwrap it; blowing bubbles probably wasn't the most mature thing to do, but he'd got into the habit of practising whenever he was forced to sit and wait for anything.

He felt as annoyed with himself as with anyone else now. What was wrong with him? He'd got to hang out with his friends this afternoon, and he liked being with his friends. And he'd got to see Taichi, just like he wanted. So why couldn't he shake the niggling sense of wrongness, that there was something right beneath his nose that he should be seeing, and wasn't? It was like staring at a math problem, except that he knew that there would be no clear-cut right or wrong answer, only what he chose to make of it himself.

As soon as Sora had disappeared through the shop door, Toshiki buried his face in his hands, emitting a low moaning noise. Taichi, rather unsympathetically, gave a snort of laughter.

"If you'd just lay off some, dipshit, she might actually think about dating you."

"Damn, you really think?" Toshiki's head jerked up, and he fisted his hand in the front of Taichi's shirt. "Give me some more tips, man! I'm desperate here!"

"Tip number one: nobody loves a stalker."

Toshiki let his hand drop in defeat, leaning back on the bench with a dramatic sigh. "Why the hell am I asking somebody who doesn't even _like_ girls?"

"Hey! I like girls!" Taichi pretended to look affronted, turning to Daisuke for backup. "He can vouch for me! I like girls, right, Dai?" he said, with a face so totally straight that Daisuke instantly knew that he would never, ever be able to manage anything of that caliber. He smiled inwardly, pleased and not a little smug to be a part of the joke.

"Yeah," he said, "he really likes girls." Well, it wasn't a lie. Daisuke had always kind of got the impression from comments Taichi had made that he didn't have much of a preference one way or the other. He wasn't sure how he felt about that now, whether it was nice to know that maybe Taichi did like him just for who he was, or whether he should still be worried when he hung out with girls because they could give him things Daisuke couldn't. He knew perfectly well that Taichi thought of Sora as his second sister, but he almost shot a glare in her direction as he reacted to the thought.

"Whatever!" Toshiki waved a hand half-heartedly. The grin crept back onto his face, as though it was a part of him that he had to actively battle to keep away. "Y'know, what with him giving you his precious goggles and everything, I'd have wondered about you and him if he wasn't -" He broke off, looking concerned. "Daisuke, are you okay?"

Daisuke felt his face turning a shade of purple to match his eye as he fought against the gum that he had nearly swallowed. He leaned over, still hacking and coughing, and managed to clear his airway, leaving tears of effort at the corners of his eyes. Taichi helpfully thumped him on the back. "I'm okay," he finally managed to say, his voice cracking on the words.

"Maybe you should get a drink someplace..." Toshiki's head twisted left and right as he scanned the street, homing back in after a moment on the ice cream establishment, where Sora was still waiting on the other side of the glass. Immediately, he hopped up and vaulted over the bench. "Hey, they sell sodas here too! How great is that? I'll go - don't move!"

"He's got it _bad_. It's pitiable." Taichi shook his head, slowly, as his friend bounced through the shop doorway. He turned back to Daisuke. "You really feel okay?"

"I just choked, that's all."

Taichi grinned. "Saves me the trouble." His gaze lingered, his expression growing a little softer. "No, I mean, _okay_ okay. You're not... sore today, or anything?"

_Sore? Oh - _Daisuke flushed. It was nice, and kind of unexpected, for Taichi to still be so concerned, but... he wasn't fragile. He didn't really know why Taichi would think that such a tangible part of it would even be important when he'd waited for so long for it to happen. It had been that long, he thought, with faint surprise. Years. He'd wanted it before he even understood what it was.

"No," he said. His hand automatically went up to his head, and he tugged at the elastic of his goggles, scraping at strands of trapped hair. "Well, maybe a little, but - it's okay! I mean, I don't care about that! I just liked... you don't have to fuss over me!" he finished, frustrated at his own awkwardness.

Taichi's mouth remained somewhat in the shape of a smile, but his forehead creased, marring the picture. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Dai, I care about you. You have to know that. Even if -" He paused, then shook his head, as if trying to clear it. "No, forget about that right now. I do care about you. I don't want to think I hurt you. Ruins my whole day, y'know?" he added, trying for a joke, but it fell slightly flat, as if it had difficulty penetrating the hot, heavy air.

Daisuke felt his frown mirroring Taichi's. Even if what? He'd taken things too fast, been too rough? He was genuinely surprised now that Taichi might think that he hadn't enjoyed himself. Now he thought back, he couldn't remember it really hurting at all, despite what his brain had been trying to insist to the contrary: just an extremely weird, stretchy-full sensation and thinking that after all of this it just wasn't going to _go_ and they'd have to stop after all, when suddenly it did, leaving Taichi seated in him and a feeling of overwhelming closeness that numbed the twinges in his muscles to nothing. He tried to sound bright, despite how it still made him want to blush actually talking about it. He'd probably feel like that for a while yet, he thought.

"Well, you didn't hurt me! Not even for a minute! So... quit thinking you did, okay?"

Taichi's grin started to look more genuine again. "Yes, Dai."

"And quit worrying about me so much."

"Yes, Dai."

"And quit saying that!" Daisuke tried to dig his elbow into Taichi's ribs, and the other boy evaded it neatly, capturing him in a brief headlock instead. Both of them laughed, the tension easing like a headache suddenly lifts.

Later, after they had finished off the ice cream and sodas, they stopped by Toshiki's apartment and fought their way through his plethora of small brothers and sisters to pick up a ball before they went down to the soccer field. Taichi insisted that he and Sora team up against Toshiki and Daisuke, despite Daisuke saying that two people wasn't really a _team_, and Sora laughingly complaining that it wasn't fair anyway because she was so rusty. The furious daytime heat of the sun began to let up a little as it sank lower to become a soft, swollen balloon on the horizon, stretching long-legged shadows on the grass behind them. Daisuke scored two pseudo goals, although he suspected that Taichi wasn't really trying all that hard to stop them.

It hadn't turned out to be such a bad afternoon after all. And there would be other days, lots of them, to spend with Taichi, wouldn't there? Of course there would.

ooo ooo ooo

As he reached the intersection three blocks away from Taichi's apartment, Daisuke quickened his pace. He had walked or run the same route a hundred times before, and it had never seemed to take more than a few minutes, but today, with his new eagerness for the goal that lay at the end, fiddling obstacles jumped up at every step that he never remembered noticing or having problems with before. Like someone trying to get used to new glasses, he tripped on curbs and the edges of paving slabs. Dodging a woman with a baby carriage, he walked into a fire hydrant. He bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for the light to change at a pedestrian crossing. The sooner he could actually see Taichi's building and was on a straight run, the better he'd feel, but all of the crossing and sidestepping was just making each block stretch out longer and longer in front of him, like he still hadn't really gotten anywhere. Daisuke wished he had his own personal fast forward button like a VCR.

After supper, and some judicious whining that fooled everybody except Jun, Daisuke had convinced his mother to let him go over to Taichi's apartment on the condition that he asked Taichi to help him study. He had left trying to look authentic by carrying a backpack stuffed with a dozen of the first books he could grab, even though he knew perfectly well that FC Tokyo were playing at home and there was no way that Taichi was likely to be interested in moving more than a foot from the TV in his room that evening, let alone studying. Not only did the televised game virtually guarantee that Daisuke wasn't going to turn up at Taichi's door only to find that he was out, it would be, he thought, as the melody sounded and he hurried over the white stripes of the crossing, a perfect excuse for Taichi to ask him to _stay_.

He'd had quite a few thoughts about what they might do later. No sex, if Taichi's parents were home - if he was honest, he did still have the memories of an ache down there anyway, although he wouldn't have minded Taichi bringing him off with his hands again at all, and the idea of returning the favor made his stomach knot with a strange new excitement - but maybe they would start cuddling while they were lying on his bed, and then maybe Taichi would look at him with his warm, lopsided grin, meant just for him this time, and they'd kiss. Daisuke had it all planned. But what was less easy to decide was exactly what he'd say to Taichi first of all, and what reason he'd give for coming over without even calling first without just blurting out, "I really wanted to see you!" He'd sound like Jun used to when she fangirled over her crushes. Daisuke pulled a face, ignoring the odd looks a few people walking in the opposite direction threw him. He'd never been like that, had he?

It was difficult to work out in his mind. So rather than worrying about it and never reaching where he wanted to be, Daisuke was doing what he did best and running at it full tilt, fighting his way through the hard parts as quickly as possible to get to the good times on the other side. He glanced up as he passed the laundromat. There had been a breeze today; it hadn't been quite so gaspingly hot, and now the sky was looking a bit overcast; dull, even, towards the bay. But the weather wasn't going to make any difference to him, was it?

Daisuke wouldn't usually have had any problem running the couple of flights up to Taichi's apartment - he hadn't wanted to hang about and waste precious time waiting for another elevator - but the anticipation made his chest tight, reducing his air capacity, and when he reached Taichi's floor, he bent double for a moment to catch his breath, resting his hands on his knees like a marathon runner at the end of the course. He just needed a minute. He could talk again now. Crossing the landing, he pressed the doorbell, and listened to the familiar ring.

"Door!" he heard Taichi's father call from somewhere inside the apartment, and then Hikari's voice responding, "I've got it, Dad!" The latch rattled, and she appeared in a narrow strip, immediately opening the door wider as she saw who it was. "Dai, you're probably the last person I expected to see!"

It was funny, Daisuke thought; all the time he used to spend picturing himself standing at Hikari's door with the courage screwed up tight inside him to ask her on a date, and now he was aware that he was standing at this same door with Hikari looking at him in the same way that he'd always imagined, and it was her brother inside, not her, who was making his heart thump in his chest. She was his friend, and always had been; he could see that now. He suddenly wanted to sit down and talk to her about it all, so they could laugh together at the crazy way life worked, but for the time being, he settled for just grinning. "Hey, what are you talking about? I'm here all the time, aren't I? Your mom and dad should adopt me!"

Hikari laughed as she moved back to let him step inside. "I think you and Tai under the same roof would give Dad a breakdown!" Automatically, as he pulled off his sneakers, she bent to turn them around on the mat. "No, I meant - isn't there a game tonight? I figured you'd be staying at home and hogging your remote."

Daisuke shrugged, trying to make it look casual, and realizing for the first time how difficult it was to be casual on purpose. It was hard to control his muscles, and every movement felt grossly exaggerated. Hopefully anyone watching him from inside the apartment would just assume that he was excited about the soccer, which wasn't all that unlikely. "Yeah, and I was going to. But then I thought it might be better if I came over and watched it here, because I don't have a TV in my room - you know that, right - and Mom always tells me to keep the volume down. And there's some crappy romance movie on later that Jun'll probably bug me all night if she can't see." Despite his lingering nerves, Daisuke felt unreasonably proud of himself. That had all sounded totally plausible.

"Hey! _I_ like some of those movies, you know!" Hikari poked him, but a small, puzzled 'v' appeared between her eyebrows. "I thought Tai said just now he was going to change before he went out, though... maybe I wasn't listening." She smiled again. "He _was_ yelling through the bathroom door at the time. I'm pretty sure he's changing, anyway. Come on in."

Daisuke had also stopped really listening by this point, aside from noting the fact that Taichi was in his room. He was as familiar with the apartment as he was with his own, but it all seemed subtly different as he walked through it this evening. He couldn't put his finger on it. He wondered if Taichi's parents had redecorated or bought a whole lot of new furniture. Or maybe it was that nothing there had actually changed, but that he _felt_ different.

When he reached Taichi's half-open door, Daisuke found himself, for some other reason that wasn't quite clear, hesitating. It would have been perfectly normal for him to bounce straight in, and he knew that, logically, he should be even less shy about it now. His hand twitched by his side, the instinct to immediately push on the door still strong. Sweat formed in his palm, and, hurriedly, he wiped it off on the leg of his pants. He didn't think that he'd ever be able to visit Taichi and Hikari's apartment again without feeling the warm pressure of Taichi's hand on his back as he guided him through it into the sunshine. Even just looking at this door would always excite him.

He was still wondering whether or not to knock when Taichi's voice floated out of the room.

"So, you planning to just go on standing there like a dork, or are you gonna come in?"

The bubble of awkwardness lodged in Daisuke's chest moved, dissolving, with the familiar teasing. Hand straight out, he barged indignantly through the door. "Who's a _dork?_"

"Nobody, but it made you move, didn't it?" Taichi emerged from his closet, smirking. He was bare chested, and the jeans he was wearing were unfastened. Whether he hadn't noticed, or just couldn't be bothered to fix them yet wasn't obvious; either could have been equally likely. There were two shirts over his arm, and he swung around, holding them up, one in each hand. "What d'you think? Stick with the white one?"

Daisuke blinked, momentarily confused. "Huh?"

"Nah. Too messy." Taichi made a half-hearted attempt at folding the shirt a couple of times before throwing it back onto a shelf. "I'll just spill soda or something down it. Tell me again why I even _own_ anything white?" Without waiting for an answer, he stuck his arms into the sleeves of the blue shirt and pulled it over his head. "Better, right?"

Daisuke took a breath. "Yeah." Another, more deeply. "It's fine." He knew that the disappointment had to be audible in his voice now, as Hikari's comment came back to him. He hadn't registered the words when she'd said them, not properly, but he was slotting them in with how Taichi was behaving. "You're going someplace?" he managed to ask.

"Yeah, it's Matt's gig tonight, remember?" Taichi had tugged open a drawer, and was rummaging through it, turning up leaking pens, empty kaki peanut bags, and, finally, a wallet. Sweeping the mess back into the drawer and slamming it back into non-existence, he glanced over his shoulder at Daisuke. "Hey, I'm sorry, Dai. I'm being pretty rude, aren't I? Come on - talk to me while I try and find my keys in all the crap in here." The corners of his mouth were curled up in a half-grin, although he still looked distracted. "You only passing by, or did I leave stuff at your place again?"

Now Daisuke didn't just feel awkward, he felt like an idiot. He'd done it again, hadn't he; rushed in just assuming that all of his plans were somehow going to work themselves out how he wanted them to in the end. For a moment, he considered lying and saying yes, he just stopped by on his way over to Takeru's, or Kiyoshi's, or anyone's, but as he looked down at his hands, Daisuke suddenly felt an odd sort of defiance. Okay, he thought, let tonight throw whatever it wanted in his way. He was going to work something out somehow. Why shouldn't he have something turn out nice for him more than once? He raised his head, smiling determinedly, as if that were the way to make it come right.

"Well, I was thinking maybe I could stay over here and watch the game, but it'd be cool to hang out at the concert too!" The idea actually appealed to Daisuke, now he thought more about it. People went on dates to movies and rock concerts, and it suited him and Taichi a lot more than lying around at home all the time. They'd just get really bored after a while, most likely, and the last thing he wanted was for Taichi to think he was a boring date. Another thought crossed his mind. "And I guess it would probably be a good thing for you to show up, right? I mean - no matter what's happened." Ken, at complete odds to his past, was usually too passive for Daisuke to be able to imagine fighting with him the way Taichi did with Yamato - he couldn't picture them throwing insults at each other - but still, the idea of not speaking to his own best friend, of having this wall of silence between them, gave him a heavy, slightly sick sensation inside. If he was Taichi, he thought, he'd hate having this feeling buried underneath everything else.

Outside, grey clouds scudded across the sky. Taichi crawled out, backwards, from under the bed, where he'd been searching through the pockets of the clothes tossed under there. Several chunks of his already wild hair were sticking out at ninety degree angles, and Daisuke would have laughed, but something in the other boy's expression inhibited it. "I have to talk to him."

"I know. It's okay - I mean, I can just wait for you."

"No, I have to _talk_ to him. I have to... fix this shit."

"Yeah, I know, and I said I'll wait - I don't mind, really, and -"

"Dai!" Taichi interrupted him, sitting back on his knees. Daisuke could hear the change in his voice, in just that one word. Taichi sounded impatient. "I have to see him. I have to see him, and I don't know how long it'll take or if I'm coming back home afterwards. So maybe it'd be better if you didn't hang around and wait, and we take a rain check and hang out another day. Are you good with that?" His eyes met Daisuke's. He looked almost guilty, like when he'd been asking him if he'd hurt him outside the ice cream shop. "I guess you were thinking about having some fun. I'm really sorry, okay?"

Daisuke was aware that his fists were pressed to his sides, screwed up with a tension that he hadn't been fully conscious of. Slowly, painstakingly, he forced his fingers to uncurl, the blood to drain back into his knuckles, but the tightness inside didn't ease; instead, almost to his astonishment, he could feel it twisting into an emotion that he had never thought that Taichi could make him feel in any kind of way that mattered. For perhaps the first time since he'd known him, he was angry. For the first time he felt, after what Taichi had given him, that he deserved something better. His retort, when it sprang to his lips, came in a high, sharp voice that he almost didn't recognize as his own.

"Well, I'm sorry too, but I thought it might be nice to just spend some time with you tonight when you're supposed to be the person I'm _dating!_"

Now Taichi was actively staring. He looked confused, as if he were trying to rearrange Daisuke's words to make some kind of sense, and failing. Then he began to shake his head, very, very slowly. "Dai... we're not dating."

And as Daisuke looked back at him, all the wishing and the nervousness and the excitement of the last week was suddenly ripped away, dropped away like the pit of his stomach on the Joypolis roller coaster, leaving him with nothing but a sick, hollow feeling in its place. For a moment, he actually tried to convince himself that this was just a way of dumping him quickly, because even that seemed preferable to the alternative, but Taichi's manner and his reaction to what Daisuke had said told him that that wasn't it. He knew he should have turned on his heel and walked out of the apartment and started work on trying to pretend that it was all some bad dream and that he'd wake up tomorrow to find that everything was back to the way it had always been. He knew that he didn't need to listen to Taichi any longer, but he was still standing in his room, and his feet weren't moving.

Taichi ran a hand through his hair, only making matters there worse. "Fuck - you thought -"

"I guess I was just dumb again, wasn't I? I mean, why would I be anything else?"

"You can stop with that crap! Nobody calls you dumb in front of me. Not even you!" Taichi was getting to his feet, but he made no move towards Daisuke. It was as if he wasn't sure whether he had the right to. "I thought it was what you wanted."

He had wanted it, Daisuke thought. More than he could ever make Taichi understand. "I wanted _you_."

"You were acting like you were more than ready. And I knew you were a... that you hadn't done it before, and -" Taichi broke off. He looked almost lost. "You're my friend. And you _are_ cute, and I thought that you thought the same about me and we could have a good time together, and your first time could be with somebody who'd look after you properly, and gave a fuck about you, and wouldn't hurt you." He paused. "And I ended up hurting you anyway," he said, after a moment.

"Yeah. But you wouldn't have if I hadn't let myself get hurt."

"I wanted you to feel good about yourself." Taichi's voice was unusually soft. "I wasn't using you, Dai. I wouldn't take it out on other people like that. I don't do the revenge shit."

All at once, Daisuke felt weak, the adrenaline rush he had been riding on for the past few hours ebbing away with the sudden understanding and leaving him empty underneath it. How couldn't he have seen it, with the way they always acted? The breath he sucked in shuddered in his chest, swallowed tears that he refused to let come. He had that much pride. "It's still cheating, though, right?" he said, in a monotone.

"Nah." A watery smile that was probably meant to be reassuring flickered around Taichi's mouth. "He's okay with me... hanging out with other people sometimes. As long as it isn't serious." The smile vanished. "That didn't mean what it sounded like -"

"I know."

Just for a second, there was something in Taichi's face that mirrored his own; something that looked almost as helpless. "I can't let go of him."

"I know that too."

"I have to get moving." Taichi had, Daisuke noticed absently, found his keys under the bed, and he turned them over a few times in his hand, but his actions didn't immediately follow his words. He looked at Daisuke searchingly, as if he thought he might be able to find a clue in his face as to how he could make things right. "You did enjoy yourself, didn't you? We can still get together again, some other time -"

"No!" Daisuke cut him off, quickly. The last of his dignity was hanging on by a thread, and he was convinced that if he listened to any more, he _would_ cry. He wouldn't be able to stop himself. The determination not to let Taichi now see him cry, after everything else that had happened, made him strain so hard not to blink that his eyes burned. "I don't think I want to. It doesn't really work for me like that, you know? So I guess it would be better if we just went back to being..."

"Friends?"

Daisuke stared at him, tiredly. "Are we?"

A frown passed across Taichi's face. "We've never stopped being friends, Dai."

The air conditioning unit on the wall rattled a little with the wind, and there was a spattering sound as the first few fat droplets of rain hit the glass. Taichi twisted his head towards the window and exhaled. "Take a look at that. I guess it never lasts, does it?"

Daisuke followed his gaze, although he wasn't sure if it was the rain that made things look blurry. "No," he said, "I guess it doesn't." He felt a hand rest warily on his shoulder.

"Hey," Taichi said, "come on. Walk you downstairs?"

Daisuke nodded, and stepped aside to let Taichi leave the room, wondering, as he fell into step beside him, why the pain inside was so much stronger now, when the same piece was missing that had always been missing; when it was still him loving somebody who didn't love him back in the way that he wanted. And as they shut the apartment door behind them, he realized that it was because it didn't belong to him any longer.

He'd let it get away from inside of him, and now it was as much Taichi's pain as it was his.

FIN.


End file.
